icon caret-left icon caret-right instagram pinterest linkedin facebook twitter goodreads question-circle facebook circle twitter circle linkedin circle instagram circle goodreads circle pinterest circle

For better or worse, this is my BLOG, and I'm going to title it: A View of the Troubled Publishing Industry and Possibly the Troubled World as Seen Through the Eyes of a Particularly Jaded (and quite possibly troubled) Writer.... How's that for a title?

The beginnings....

Back in the late 40s through the mid 50s, Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York, could hardly be considered upscale. For the most part it was working class. Though not an area of wealth or status, it was where I spent my "formative" years, and where I never knew that I was poor. My mother, sister, baby brother and I all lived in a tiny one-bedroom basement apartment of a typical attached Brooklyn house owned by my older sister and her husband who lived upstairs. (Separated from my mother, my father lived elsewhere...long story). It was a place and time that I look back upon fondly. It was where I attended public school, through grade six, and where I made my earliest acquaintanceships and earliest friendships. And, of course, Brooklyn was home to the beloved Dodgers, the Bums, that sanctified group who dwelt in the run-down cathedral known as Ebbets Field. The Dodgers were the social glue that bound together every Brooklynite, regardless of class, religion, or ethnicity. We lived and died with them. The Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn (not unlike virtually every section of Brooklyn) was a true melting pot, and therefore, my earliest acquaintances and friends were drawn from the neighboring Polish, Italian, Jewish, blah-blah-blah, families--you get the idea. For example, because of my friendship with Pasquale (Patsy) Leuci who lived only a few doors down on Ford Street, I came to witness backyard-grown grapes squashed into a pulpy liquid under the bare feet of his older sisters. The process took place periodically (annually?) in a huge wooden vat that occupied the center of their one-car detached garage; clearly, there were priorities. Patsy's father, Mr. Leuci, (I never knew his first name) was an old-timey ice man. In fact, he may have been the very last of the breed--by then most homes had refrigerators and freezers, and most bars and restaurants had their own ice makers. Somehow though, after all these years, I can still envision his ancient yellow truck with the blue lettering, multiple ice chutes and hanging tongs, rounding the corner at Ford Street, returning home after a long and wearying day making the rounds delivering cumbersome blocks of frozen water. As I recall, Mr. Leuci spoke no (or little) English, and on Sundays (as Mrs. Leuci and several of their daughters--and daughters-in-law--tended the magnum pot of gravy bubbling away on the stovetop), Mr. Leuci would laze away the afternoon on a rickety kitchen chair plucking Italian songs on his mandolin and sipping joyously on his potent homemade "guinea red" from an unpretentious and un-stemmed water glass. Patsy's older brothers were always busy around the house, or working on their cars. I remember an old Chevy coupe that was one brother's pride and joy. I helped him wash and dry it one day. I was honored. The Leuci's were a classic example of the tightknit extended family, and their little house on Ford Street was the center of their universe. They didn't know that they were poor either.
Be the first to comment